It’s been a busy week for fixing things …
No sooner had I got safely home from Edinburgh on Thursday, than I had to hitch up the trailer and head back out into the evening – in the face of mounting yellow snow warnings which in the end amounted to a light dusting, somewhat disappointingly – for another session of the local Repair Shop:
This was somewhat thinly attended, perhaps due to said yellow warnings, but there were enough people and tools there to help me get new hooks put on the cow pannier, and to make some progress on fixing a wooden clothes horse, plus plenty of good cycling and general repair oriented chat.
Emboldened by my success, I spent the next morning putting new brake blocks on the bike (in retrospect, this might have been a task to do before I’d cycled downhill with a trailer, but fortunately the old brakes held out this time) and have also finally had a go at a spot of visible mending on my jeans (after learning how to do it at the previous repair shop). The end result isn’t quite as beauteous as some of the examples you can find on Instagram, but are at least wearable.
I’m not the only one. The coonsil have more or less finished fixing the washed out road, and I was able to once more cut down to my usual quiet back road to get into Bigtown yesterday, instead of having to stick it out on the main road – at least at the weekend when the work isn’t going on. They’ve not just repaired the washed out banking with some mahoosive boulders, but they’ve also resurfaced a lot of it and even added a few passing places which will make it nicer to ride on with a giant 4×4 on my tail.
Interestingly, though, two months of riding on the B Road have somewhat hardened me to it – and it is a good mile shorter than the more pleasant back-roads route. Now that I have tasted the forbidden fruit of simply going direct, will I want to revert to adding the extra distance just for a slightly more civilised experience? It’s already a bit of a dilemma when I’m short of time, although I imagine it will only take one nasty close pass to send me scuttling back to safety. I’m fortunate to have the choice, I suppose. But it would be nice to live in a world where the bike-friendly route was the direct one …
That said, given the amount of complaining my legs have been doing since taking the trailer into town and back, I could maybe do with the extra miles, just to get back into training.
What do you like to repair?
Town Mouse 
I’m fortunate that my local repair shop is hosted by my employer; we had one yesterday. It doesn’t include bikes though, because that would mean me volunteering and being with, you know, people, on my day off…
I love repairing anything I can! The latest rabbit hole is essaying to repair a phone-charger; I failed.
A new project is a wooden tea-tray repair.
If it’s broken…
I am blessed/cursed with strong mechanical abilities. I will attempt to repair anything that doesn’t work, or is in shabby condition. I love mechanical things like bicycles, sewing machines and such. Electronics not as much however, I did manage to resurrect a fancy LED/fiber optic Christmas tree and save it from the landfill, that required some soldering with a micro torch and ordering some odd sized connectors. I also have a homestead repair list from hell. I am working through 20 years of deferred maintenance that we inherited when my FIL died.
Aaron
All you clever handy people. It is fun though